Yes Edward, the only acceptable prenups are those agreed by the, well advised, intending couple and ought to revolve around shared custody and taking out what you brung!

If it all comes crashing down due to life altering injury?

Any compensation ought to belong exclusively to the injured partner, unless the abled bodied partner picks up the slack and shoulders the injured partners burden, as opposed to jumping into the arms of a wealthier other?

And all other earned income, while in the relationship, treated as shared income, as ought be shared purchases, house car etc, taken with mutual consent while a single unit?

In conclusion let me add, that can't ever include leaving one partner unemployable or homeless and destitute in the twilight years!

My sainted mother i.e., rejected court ordered support; and while she keep her Celtic pride, we four kids paid for every forgone penny and for our entire lives!
Alan B.

If this subject is viewed from the point of view of children's rights, then a solution becomes clearer.

Alan B highlighted the consequences to children, of bitter struggles between partners at the end of a family relationship. It's too often devastating to the security and the future of children for parents to be clawing at each other over material values!

Currently the family home is sold and divvied-up between contestants. What should happen to be fair, and in the service of justice, children should be apportioned a physical slice of the pie at the time of sale, to be held in trust until they turn eighteen.

obviously to teach young children biblical principles of marriage and family and faithfulness saw this country greatly prosper. Now our secular high priests have so trashed everything decent and now are really dumb enough to ask why. Very sad to see kids coming last.

Alan B

That reminds me of Phyllis Diller's advice "Never go to bed angry. Stay up and fight."

Jennifer, I ask you to provide a simple 'hand on heart answer' to my simple question,
Q. Do you think it is fair for your sector to charge such enormous fees 'outrageous at times' for sorting out people lives at what must be one of the most stressful times of their lives.

I also ask, don't you think you may have a serious conflict of interest in this highly profitable scheme, one that often strips the tax payer of thousands.

I have had a family member go through a roller coaster and although he didn't have much to start with, due to his income, about $80K a year, he got didly squat by way of government support. But I guess it's hard for you to comment on that, given you most likely pay more in tax than he earns.

I watched this man (43) go from the most loving, caring father to a seriously twisted person because this lawyer did little for him other than to watch the courts take every cent he 'didn't have' ,a fair swag of which was taken by lawyers.

I have to wonder about the argument that pre-nups would take a lot of the courts time. Perhaps initially however I suspect it would not take long for a small number of relatively standard ones to emerge. It should not take courts (or some other mechanism ) long to register an agreement which they have seen and accepted previously.

There are so many unknowns in marriage (what about defacto in this?) and procreation that it's pretty much impossible to be very specific so quite likely that agreements with some broad clauses would arise.

A willingness or otherwise to accept (in a legally binding way) a particular broadly accepted pre-nup (or pushing for one that was clearly unfair) would be a useful indicator of a potential spouses values that might save some a lot of grief.

As for the earlier suggestion that children should be automatically entitled to a share of the assets. On what basis and do those reasons apply elsewhere?

If anything I suspect that would just help retain the aspect of the current system where children become something to fight over for financial reasons.

R0bert